The Porn Version Has the Same Name

Oh, man, this movie!

I mean, it starts and it's like BANG, ShOOOOOM! And then the terrorists arrive and they're all like "POWPOWPOW", and Bruce Willis is like "Fuck this!" and a bunch of people die, and there are cops that totally don't do anything because Bruce Willis is doing their jobs better, and then Alan Rickman's like "AAAAAAAH" and then Christmas music plays!

That makes it a Christmas movie!

Yeah, the world is divided in two on this movie, between people who've never seen it and people who consider it a Christmas classic. A franchise that launched Bruce Willis' career, that gave us the magic of Alan Rickman for the first time, and taught us all a little bit about the importance of ingenuity and good footwear, Die Hard lives up to expectations. There are already many drinking games for Die Hard floating around the internet.

But how many of those games were crafted while watching the movie for the first time?

"Drink Hard": The Rules

We stuck with beer on this one, but if you want to go with something harder...we'd recommend Jagermeister. Not only is it German, but the bottle has a deer and a cross on it! How can you go wrong for a Christmas movie?

Like drinking a hand grenade

As I hinted earlier, we did something different when making rules for this game. I had never seen Die Hard before, and had not gotten the chance to preview it before game night. So I made six base rules:

1. Drink for Title Drops. That's every time someone says "Die Hard"2. Drink when they drink3. Drink for Daddy Issues4. Drink when someone says "Fuck". Lifted from our "In Bruges" game, this rule was too good not to reuse.5. Drink when the movie makes allusions to Christmas.6. Drink when Bruce Willis drops a one-liner.

"Yippie-ki-yay, Mother Fucker" gets two drinks

As the movie continued, I added rules as I deemed necessary. The results are below, and a complete list divided by difficulty level are at the end of the article.

The Players

Our players for this game are...

Krissy Pappau: Supreme drinking game overlord (Hard)Some Guy: Will one day start a band called "Argyle and the Bear" (Medium)Pooh Daddy: Watched safetly from a distance, like the LAPD (Easy)Kay Shiraz: Still likes "Boondock Saints" better, but this movie's up there on her favorites list (Medium)

Drunk with Power

Here's how we made this game. Every time I felt like I saw potential for another game rule while watching the film, I'd write it down and we'd drink whenever it came up. If at any point someone playing the game refused to drink for any more rules, they'd use the ones we'd established up until that point and all of those rules would make up one difficulty level. So the first person to drop would play easy, second medium, etc. Simple enough.

I learned that nobody should put me in charge of monitoring people's alcohol intake when I'm drinking myself. In fact, I shouldn't be put in charge of managing anything bigger than a lunch date. I'm too easily corruptable.

It all started slowly. I added a few rules here and there during the first half hour. Some Guy and Kay Shiraz did not make it easy on themselves. They took each additional rule in stride, and to be fair, the rules didn't leave much of an impact...not right away, at least.

The thing about rules is that they tend to pile up. And we didn't quite realize that until about halfway through the film.

About here, I think

The first rule I made that gave people pause was "drink when someone talks to themselves". Some Guy argued that we already had this covered with "Bruce Willis one-liners", but I knew better; it wasn't just Willis that muttered to himself, and the things Willis said weren't always profound. We continued, more cautiously.

I began to create rules spitefully, to enact some form of vengence on my fellow players. At one point, when Willis exits onto the rooftop of the Nakatomi Plaza, we see a majestic shot of the Los Angeles skyline.

Some Guy, having lived in New York just long enough to become snobbish about it, remarked "Look at the much lamer skyline that is Los Angeles."

I did not take that lying down. I made it a rule that we had to drink every time we saw the LA skyline. And didn't stop there.

I'm right up there with this guy in terms of villainy.

The final version of the game we created has over twenty rules. Nobody made the decision to stop until over an hour into the movie, by which point ten rules had been made in addition to the three we always use. Some Guy had to go lie down for a while. I threw up. So all in all, I'd consider this a pretty successful game.

"You're lucky in a way, because I don't throw up so I stay drunk for a very long time." -Kay Shiraz

Action Jackson ... er, Willis

I want to watch this movie again when I'm sober, because I had a really great time. It's wonderfully paced, and gives us a large dosage of man. You only see this kind of gritty action nowadays in shoot-em-up video games.

"Bruce Willis leveled up! He has weapons now!" -Pooh Daddy

Two actors got their start late in their careers with this movie: Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman. Willis, age 33 when he won the role of John McClane, had only a few minor roles in television and some corny romantic comedies before this film changed his trajectory forever. Nobody had him pegged as a tough-guy action star, certainly not a "cowboy", as McClane is constantly called during the film. The reputation he earned through this role carried all the way through the new millenium and continues today.

Which is why I was so surprised that McClane himself is not as butch as I assumed.

Clearly this man has no idea what he's getting himself into

The reason why Die Hard is so compelling as an action movie is that we have no reason to believe that McClane is going to make it out of Nakatomi Plaza alive. He has one weapon, a pistol. He is trapped inside a building he knows nothing about, surrounded by scary German terrorists (sorry...thieves), and is really torn up emotionally about his recent encounter with his estranged wife. He's in an unfamiliar city and he has to rely on his wits alone. The audience doesn't know if he's smart, if he's dealt with this kind of thing before, if he's diplomatic. We know nothing about McClane. We're learning with him. We're putting ourselves in his shoes and seeing the fear in his eyes when he gets backed into a corner, and we'd like to think we'd be as quick on our feet as he is. McClane isn't the bear of a man we've come to think of Bruce Willis as. He's more like a wily ferret, chewing away at the suspension ropes that are keeping Gruber and his men in control of the situation.

Moreover, his role in this film is propelled by the idea that he is insecure in his place in the world. His marital troubles started when his wife Holly got a huge promotion at work and started taking on international deals. Of course she began to earn WAY more money than your standard police officer makes ("Don't you hate it when that happens?" Kay Shiraz quoted blithely) and McClane started to take his insecurity out on her. She left New York, took their kids across the country and gave him space to figure out how to deal with himself.

Bruce Willis is playing a man who is less bad-ass than macho. His thirst to prove himself, his tenacity, it all comes from his insecurity about his manhood. He went nuts when his wife went all career woman, tried and failed to win her back, and then got caught in a game of cat-and-mouse with Gruber. Is it possible that things only went as well for him as they did because he was fueled by the desire to be a better man? Would he have been nearly as successfull at navigating his end of the operation if his home life had been peaceful and he wasn't already desperate?

This all makes sense especially when Gruber uses Holly as leverage to get McClane to reveal himself. McClane is never looking at the big picture; if he fails, he loses any chance of getting his wife back EVER, and he will never be able to face himself in any situation.

"God, he must feel so inferior." -Some Guy

Willis understands the weakness inherent in John McClane, and it's McClane's weakness that elevates him beyond the standard action star. We want him to succeed, to redeem himself, and our investment in McClane makes his victory and the resulting explosions all the sweeter.

Now what about our villain?

Gimmie Sommadat Rickman

Alan Rickman.

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Another actor whose career peaked late, Rickman was 42 when he was cast as Hans Gruber, having no major film credits in the U.S beforehand. Most of us are all to familiar with his sultry voice and his piercing gaze, but Rickman isn't exactly what you think of when you think "tyrannical mastermind".

And yet, he keeps getting cast as antagonists. After Die Hard, his filmography was filled with the slimiest, nastiest scoundrels to grace the silver screen. Severus Snape, Judge Turpin, that guy in Bottle Shock...the list goes on. There's just something about this guy that makes people feel like he'll mess things up, I guess.

Or maybe not. Something clicked for me while watching this movie. It was when McClane met Gruber for the first time, and Gruber pretends to be an American investor who's been caught up in the whole mess. McClane suspects nothing, and leads him through the building, and we see a glint of triumph in Gruber's eyes. But we also see relief.

Don't bond with him! He's evil!

I always knew Rickman was a talanted actor, but I didn't understand what his strength was until I watched this movie. Gruber numbers among the lowest of the low. He's deceitful, vicious, and too extreme in his beliefs for his old political protest group to handle. You have to be pretty wacko to be shunned by activists. But we are fascinated by him, because Rickman gives the man humanity. It would be so EASY to portray this man as another monologuing German archvillian, but Rickman gives him a softness, intelligence, even at times pathos. Just like Willis did with McClane, Rickman allows us to see Gruber's weaknesses, even when the script calls upon him to be strong.

Rickman is a master of making the audience feel pity and genuine affection for vile, rotten characters. Severus Snape's turbulent emotions burbled just below the surface of his placid exterior. Judge Turpin genuinely mourned the dark turn London's legal system was taking, and saw his lust for his ward as fierce, passionate love. Even that douche from Love Actually, in Rickman's hands, became a man who was torn apart by his physical desires. He slept with his assistant because he could not help himself.

Together, Gruber and McClane drive the movie. The action's cool, but without these two actors battling each other, I'm not sure sure Die Hard would pack the same punch. So to all the Michael Bays of the world, listen up: If you want us to remember your explosions, you have to make us remember the people running away from them. It's not enough anymore to have a bunch of pretty faces and some fancy technical elements. This movie did it better before CGI because it had memorable characters and true human emotion. All the exploding elevators in the world couldn't make up for losing that.

That's real fear on his face. Rickman is actually falling from that building. AMAZING.

The Results

Working on it

As promised, here is the final list of rules for the Die Hard drinking game.

Easy Mode1. Title drops2. Drink when they drink3. Drink for Daddy Issues4. Drink when someone says "Fuck"5. Drink for allusions to Christmas6. Drink when Bruce Willis drops a one-liner

Medium ModeAll the above rules apply. Also...1. Drink when Bruce Willis regards someone. You'll know it when you see it.2. Drink when someone dies3. Drink when something breaks. Notably heavy machinery4. Drink when someone talks to themselves5. Drink when there's a shot of the Los Angeles skyline. It IS a majestic skyline.6. Drink when someone falls. Whether it's two feet or forty feet, you still have to drink7. Drink when someone communicates by walkie-talkie

Hard ModeAll the above rules apply. Also...1. Drink when there's a shot of one person looking around a corner at another person. Or through a window, that works too.2. Drink when someone runs3. Drink when someone speaks in a foreign language4. Drink when there's a shot of Argyle in the car.5. Drink when someone says the word "Christ"

And for those of you who want to play "Die Hard Mode", here's a couple rules we didn't get around to testing.

Drink when anyone curses.The LAPD in particular have got some potty mouths on them.

Drink when references are made to cowboys, or other action heroes.In this case "Yippie-Ki-Yay, Motherfucker" actually gets THREE drinks.

Drink when the film makes a point to show us Bruce Willis' feet.

Shoes, man! Always wear shoes!

The next time we meet, dear readers, it'll be the New Year. To celebrate, we'll be looking at one of my favorite television shows of all time.

So you better listen up, dummies!

Like what you see? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, at For Your Inebriation and @KrissyPappau respectively. You'll get weekly updates, behind the scenes drunk talk, and other chatter!

For Your Inebriation is written by Krissy Pappau (Hollis Beck). Video footage is taken by Pooh Daddy (Vincent Graham) and edited by Seb (Amy Yourd). All "Die Hard" images are owned by 20th Century Fox.